Now early April, and this triptych's wingsopen to breasts and leafless trees, their hillsstill brown earth touched with green. Small crocus bloomaround a carpet's edge, where figures restalmost like lotus: supple, bent limbs pressedagainst each other, hand touching her wombbefore the ram, whose curled form fulfillsthe promise of a well, while foreign birds

move from the center. Figures without wordsrepose themselves on leaves, in loess caves,as infants had before. A woman sitswith pointed breasts in a red skirt, her earbearing a gathered bloom. Quills reappear,goat heads and trees remake the scene. Those pitscut into earth aren't populated graves:those trees, dark stems uprooted, still survive

since in the final panel blossoms thrive.Beaks gather crocus, women stand and holdagainst bare skin long curving strands which hidewhatever he has longed for, but revealall he has gained: his paradise is realand filled with petaled trees whose roots providefood for symbolic fruit veined leaves enfold,now ripening this land where no bird sings.